Field of Invention
This invention relates to the cleaning of solid waste and cat urine saturated litter clump from a cat box.
The current general practice is to manually clean the cat litter box. Two predominant methods exist depending on the type of cat litter used. Cat owners that use cat litter material that does not clump urine will periodically remove solid waste from the litter material and eventually discard the litter material after an extended period. Cat owners using the never urine clumping cat litter will manually remove the clumped urine and solid waste from the litter box.
Many cat owners find the task of manually searching the kitty litter for cat excrement obnoxious. There are health risks from exposure to cat excrement as some cat diseases are communicable to humans.
Patents showing mechanical devices for cleaning cat litter boxes include U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,048,465; 5,048,464; 4,934,317; 4,854,267; 4,846,104; 4,574,735; 4,190,525; 4,120,264; and 3,937,182. No mechanical device for cleaning cat litter boxes has gained widespread acceptance. Most of the patented devices rely on non conventional cat litter box construction which use cylindrical, circular, or partially circular containers (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,048,464; 4,934,317; 4,846,104; 4,574,735; 4,190,525 and 4,120,264). Such devices greatly restrict the operating area the cat has to maneuver in or must be very large to provide a comparable operating area. Devices that are similar to standard cat litter box constructions employ mechanisms such as filter belts that deposit waste into a receptacle at one side of the box (U.S. Pat. No. 3,937,182) or a rake that deposits the waste in a receptacle at one side of the box (U.S. Pat. No. 5,048,465). Devices such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,854,267 lift and tip the entire container while at the same time raising a screen through the material to remove wastes and store them in a separate receptacle. None of the devices have an effective means of removing urine clumps that have adhered to the floor of the cat litter box. The newer super or ultra clumping litter material not only binds with itself when wet but also forms a strong bond to a surface it comes into contact with when binding. In the rotating drum devices the urine clump may remain adhered to the wall. In other devices a layer of the urine clump will remain attached to the surface it has adhered to and/or may be fragmented by the cleaning device.